Licence Revoked
by TheMadnessofDoctorStrangelove
Summary: Following the events of LICENCE TO KILL(1989), Bond's rebellious streak has cost him his commission. With GOLDENEYE a part of a defunct future he will never see, the ex-Double-O works the world of private sanctions. While under contract, he duels with a femme fatale unwilling to let an alternate timeline stand in the way of their rendezvous. Based on T. Dalton's portrayal.
1. Chapter One

_JAMES BOND and related characters are the property of Ian Fleming Publications. Films produced and owned by EON Productions. This story is a work of unlicensed fanfiction._

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_Full Synopsis: Following the events of LICENCE TO KILL(1989), James Bond's rebellious streak has cost him his commission. With GOLDENEYE (1995) a part of a defunct future he will never see, the ex-Double-O works the world of private sanctions. While under contract, he duels with a femme fatale unwilling to let an alternate timeline stand in the way of their rendezvous. Featuring alternative (AU) ideas surrounding concepts from Goldeneye, envisioned as a grounded, down to earth short story (told in 3-4 parts)._

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_Our very first Author's Note features a (highly recommended) word on canon. Oh, joy!_

_This story takes place canonically after the EON-produced film, LICENCE TO KILL (1989) and acts as though actor **TIMOTHY DALTON** never left the role. JAMES BOND is based primarily on and intends to represent that characterization. The last four films in the classic series-GOLDENEYE among them-will not occur in this timeline and instead, we find Bond drummed out of the Secret Service. Enjoy!_

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_Chapter One_

_Kurhaus_

Men of questionable dress draped themselves on the shoulders of Athena, forever poised with helmet and lance, but no shield to hide her from reprobates. Young men with no interest in history or decorum for that matter shadow danced in the exposed facade of the great hall among the long-forgotten rulers of the earth. Open alcohol containers swayed, and the cheap contents lapped against the glass. Dull muttering, like chittering insects, quieted as a predator moved among their drunken ranks.

James Bond strolled along the former thorofare, his black patent slip-ons clacking on stone, so terribly singular in their notes. Architect Friedrich Brinckmann's triumphant ode to indulgence loomed large around him, and he felt quite small and simultaneously very vulnerable. He stopped under the great dome and suddenly thought that he and the Kurhaus itself were both overdressed. He checked his watch. It was nearly one-thirty in the morning. The Corinthian columns were bathed in an orange radiance that commanded a respect that hadn't been regarded for a very long time.

There was a time when the grandiosity of this exceptional manor had been the center of commerce for an entire spa town. The resort had long closed, the palatial fountain down the drive had long dried out, along with the prospects. As Bond stepped over a sleeping vagrant and disappeared into the darkened crevasse that had once been guarded by a Phoenix chiseled in marble, he slowly exhaled and stifled a gag. In a few paces, the stench of human decay faded and was replaced with the moldy redolence of dying opulence, frozen like its defending statues in one final gasp.

Bond took a cursory glance back the way he had come. None had followed him. The desolation, he surmised, detracted the lesser creatures of the night. The moonlight no longer penetrated in abundance, but his eyes were keen. A door of dense heartwood presented. Where there was once polish, there was rotten lumber. Kurhaus made only a single sound, uttered when Bond pushed an opening just large enough for himself to slip through without ruffling his tightly fitted tuxedo.

Despite the thunderous silence, Bond instantly felt as though he had just interrupted a party. If he would be so kind and exit these premise, the festivities could resume in earnest. _Herr does not quite meet the dress code, but if Herr would like to join the haunts, he need only strip to his bones._ Bond smiled thinly but banished the thought promptly. He did not believe in ghosts.

He was now in what was once Lambrecht Kurhaus. The restaurant, where the clientele, who had just surrendered to East Germany's finest masseuses, would belly up to the bar and feast, and put back all the weight they had lost. After all, they wouldn't want the NVA uniform to fit too loosely.

Across from Bond, bathed in a single streak of rebellious moon's shine, was a horseshoe-shaped bar. Its form was still visible under the soiled cloth that protected it beneath, probably still clean enough enjoy a drink over, a drink that would never be ordered again. Its two ends were pressed up against the far wall. Two imprisoned cabinets no longer sported spirits. Keeping either cupboard from meeting in the middle was a large brass emblem. The state arms, it proclaimed, enclosed within a laurel wreath. The etched letters read:

_Für den Schutz der Arbeiten und Bauern Macht._

_For the protection of workers and peasants power._

There was probably a quip for that, but Bond did not have one at the ready. The business at hand had already tensed his resolve. He was already trying to stifle it. A prickling heat burned in his stomach. He could no longer ignore it. With one goliath of a step, he raised onto the top of the bar and then found himself on the other side. He turned back to look at the rows of tables and booths where he had been and half expected to see a silent congregation of uniformed men with glasses raised in anticipation of his toast. He had none to give.

_Farewell to arms._ It was a thought that sprang suddenly. Bond did not say it aloud, not comfortable inviting specters (that he did not believe in) to appear.

He was standing just under the coat of arms. Whatever strange wistfulness he'd been playing with was suddenly gone. He turned toward the cupboards, catching the form of a man move to strike him. One fraction more of confusion and the mirror would have had a .380 bullet embedded into Bond's reflection. Instead, he forcefully stifled his excitement, and after an almost imperceptible moment, he was cooly appraising his own gaze. _Die, thoughts, die, down to my soul._

He looked up. The emblem was adorned with raised pieces. Most pronounced was the variation of the hammer and sickle. The club stood up straight and erect. The sickle lay through the hammer's middle with its spikes pointed upward, as though a cradle. And atop it all, two razor sharp arrows that looked like clock hands were mounted through the top of the hammer's neck. They seemed to stand at about nine and three o'clock. Bond raised a single finger and pushed the hand at nine to where seven would be, and then he mirrored the other, three to five.

The bolt was almost soundless. If anyone were in earshot, it wouldn't have resounded as anything but an old manor house settling (dying.) Bond's satisfied image beneath the so-called protection of the workers' and peasants' power slid aside, forming a hole just big enough for Bond to enter if he ducked his head. The ingress closed behind him.

Down into the earth stone steps lead him. This time, Bond's shoes made no sound at all.

He smelled The Old House before he saw the first inklings of it. The lingering dusty smell livened into a softer rendition The shadows of the things that were had slowly returned and drew together now into a puff of thickly laden smoke. The warmth was growing, but as Bond stepped level at the bottom of the passage, the ugly now made one final assault on his senses.

The stone hallway was short, stubbed, and the metal workings at its far end seemed to spring from the rock like an invading flesh disease, awkwardly asymmetrical and yet immaculately new. Dark, paint washed gunmetal formed a cyclone cage. Behind it, a man sat, as though a ticket vendor in a booth outside a movie theater. Except for the features of the face obscured by the fencing, Bond could see him clearly, and the man could see Bond. To complete this haphazard package, two tripoded flood lamps with big square vizors had been set up to the side of the walkway up against the wall. One pointed at the cage, and the other looked back at whoever came off of the step-way. Big orange cords lazily rollercoastered along velcro matting.

The other man moved first. With a groan from his lips and from his folding chair, the heavier set fellow stood up without uncrossing his arms. He had the look of an underpaid, overworked bouncer better suited to look after a gentlemen's establishment. He was shaven, but not cleanly, his hair was long and slicked back. His curls were fighting it and trying to go back home. He was head to toe in black. A simple shirt, shoes, and slacks reinforced with a leather jacket and a gold chain he'd probably spent far too much on if one considered the quality carefully.

Bond approached, slowly letting a cheeky smile sneak onto his face, a grin that did not reach his eyes.

"Turn around." The man seemed to jump at his approach.

Bond's eyes flared slightly. "I beg your pardon?" He tried to sound light and friendly, but the long disuse of his voice gave away hoarseness that came very close to hostility.

"Turn around." The annoyance in the tone scolded Bond as though he should know better. From outside the light's reach, a taller man stepped forward, who looked as heavy, but the form was much firmer. He was bald, completely hairless, in point of fact, and the small spark in his eyes formed tiny pinpoints.

Sauage sized fingers looped onto the cyclone and pulled its edges away from the wall and the behemoth stepped onto Bond's side. He was at least two heads taller than James.

The smaller man palmed a small handgun."Turn around." He would not ask again.

Bond's shrug and sigh were fit for pantomime. He turned back toward the stairway and saw another man with a much more impressive weapon-an Italian M12 submachine gun compliments of Signore Beretta-pointed right at him. The thin blond, sartorially a triplet to his leather-clad brethren, emerged from a small stone-made alcove beneath the high ascending steps. His expression was serious but vacant. Shooting Bond down would neither thrill or mortify. It was just a job.

Bond slowly but casually outstretched his hands to his sides. Hands bucking for paws clapped his suit like a rug being beaten in a spring cleaning. It started low at his feet and worked up his body. Bond's leer never broke eye contact with the pale gray orbitals looming over the machine gun. When the stampede reached his chest, a paw dived like a striking cobra into his jacket and jerked him around to face the bald security 'officer.' His breath stank of calcium decay despite his shiny white teeth. His smile was broad and did reach his eyes. His paw appeared in Bond's vision, holding a small, silver and black handgun with a dark hazel grip.

"Rule Number One," his husky voice elucidated, "No Weapons."

Bond nodded.

Baldy pocketed the firearm and continued. His voice was slow, emphatic, but not threatening, merely matter-of-fact.

"Rule Number Two. No Fighting."

"Sensible enough," Bond smiled.

"You Win What You Win. You Lose What You Lose. No Exceptions. You Asked To Leave, You Leave. Got It, English Man."

It wasn't really a question, but Bond responded warmly. "Oh, you know me." They had never met before. "I know when I've worn out my welcome." He rapped his fist against a massive shoulder carved out of granite. The other man appreciated the humor and gave a small stifled chortle. _Not as much to prove as these other chaps, _Bond guessed._ At that size, who would?_

Baldy walked back to the disheveled fencing, which had recoiled back into place. He looped his fingers into the cyclone again and pulled. He stood to one side, holding the straining barrier tightly. As Bond passed through, he nodded. The nod was returned.

"Welcome to Spielbank Kurhaus, Mister Bond."

"A pleasure," Bond replied, and then he went on, his pleasant smile fading away with each clack of his shoes.


	2. Chapter Two

_Author's Note: I've decided rather than 3-4 chapters overall, I might be better suited doing many smaller branches like this one. I seem to be doing better in small doses._

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_Chapter Two_

_The Exchange_

The casino was separated from the ugliness of the now by a sheer, blood-colored veil. The curtain revealed much, but still tantalized with just the right amount of obscurity. A warm orange glow burned fuzzily like light rendered within a wine bottle. A permanent cloud of cigar smoke dulled Bond's vision and made him slightly lightheaded, but only for a moment. He would consider a cigar after the night's business was concluded.

The man inside the cashier's booth was much friendlier looking than the men Bond encountered on guard. His wrinkles retreated, with some strain, back to his ears upon sighting the younger man. The pleasantness was out of place on his pointed features and filled James with a dread that made him question for the first time his being here. It would not be the last.

"Herzlich Willkommen," the elderly man cooed with a sighful satisfaction. His head tilted forward and studied Bond through small spectacles. The image was eerie, considering the small booth the old man occupied looked like a well out of fashioned coin-operated fortune teller box. The turban was missing, but the deceptive contemplation was not. A predator's alertness crouched behind those jaundiced eyes.

"Wechseln, Bitte." Bond did not bother with the pretense of courtesy. The request was not a request but an order, and curtly delivered. In all honesty, he suddenly felt he'd much preferably be back speaking with the gent with the machine gun. Outside, it was just a job. There was a kind of a different sort at work inside, a variety not too concerned with letting you know it. Not a casino, but a den, a hive perhaps, or a web. Bond assured himself that any word he chose would suit this lithe little shark.

"Nein, Herr Bond." Lines on the cashier's forehead rearranged into a stern furrow. The deeply set folds were cast in a hideously unflattering light. Lips made an ever so slight pop and smack sound when he spoke. The accent sounded resigned enough to have been thoughtfully curated for this Englishman. His was a smooth voice, like slipping into a warm bath. _Be careful not to drown_, Bond thought. "The House has run you a line of credit."

Bond refused flatly. "I'd rather not be indebted." He reached inside his jacket.

"We insist." Long nimble hands slapped into the exchange with a peace shattering clack.

Bond took a step forward and spied the tray as the cashier's fingers slithered back into the safety of the booth's confines and wondered who was protected from whom. He stuck his hand in, sure a cobra was waiting to strike him, and he almost smiled. Instead, his hand worked its way around a neat quantity of plaques. He brought them fully into his grasp and absently let his fingers clap the stack together. There were five in total, each a glimmering ruby, and valued (ostentatiously marked in Copperplate Calligraphy) at one hundred thousand a piece.

The downpayment was quite a bit lighter than agreed. Bond flashed a viridescent glower just peaked enough to make the little man in the pen think it was all about the money.

It was enough to establish, at least in the box runner's mind, who in this short exchange was the more perilous and who might find themselves in peril, and Bond relished the resignation in his tone. "I have a feeling that luck will be with you at the tables." Almost falsetto now with faux reassurance.

"I'm sure it will." Bond's gaze didn't waver. The cashier's did.

"You will find your best hand, I think, at a private table."

When Bond found the part in the shade and vanished, the old man's touches of humor dissolved, and the wrinkles deflated into a defeated glower of his own. He pulled at his tie and pretended for no audience but himself that he was stuffy, and that a chill hadn't run up his spine.

"And hopefully, your last."


	3. Chapter Three

_Chapter Three _

_ts'armat'ebebs gisurvebt_

A garden of oak and crystal twinkled in Bond's eye. The room was three chandeliers long, ascending in size down a one lane thorofare. On either side, the patter of chips and the spin of the roulette wheel punctuated a quiet tension. The melting glow of the gems beat down on the tables and conceived a somewhat ghastly apparition as it penetrated cigar's smoke, which rose from the games in long fumes like hot steam from a stem head. _Or an open wound inflicted on a very cold night_, Bond added ghoulishly.

At the room's far end there was a twelve-foot golden picture frame whose occupant had been torn haphazardly out of his confines. All that remained were two deeply set haunted eyes blazing out from under a military cap, and just the faintest hint of a rosy, rotund cheek. Who he was, or had been, Bond could only guess. Some champion of the people that the people had found wanting. Now, he was doomed to watch, unable to scream, as criminals of a different class helped themselves to the idle pleasures reserved for the men of his stature.

The clientele looked very much like the security men. To say that casual was the dress was an overstatement. The look of the men (and some women) were of new money, hastily won, easily spent, and gotten illy. The only difference that Bond could ascertain between customers and guards were the guards had taken one-half step closer to the razor that morning, and the weapons, of course. Unlike Athena and Apollo upstairs, the statues on guard in the casino clashed with the overabundant grandiosity, the long oak carved columns' journey to the finely primmed carpet broken by vacant stares.

The mood of the room was stern and severe. The winners did not toast their victories, and the women who directed their luck neither stomped nor cheered. Drinks were nursed, cards held close, and the contestants had the air of being among rival factions. The wall was down, but peace was brittle glass. Die Marx Die. All hail the new street capitalism. And there was Bond, an outstanding example of sartorial spender, looking very much like a relic.

An unattached dealer approached Bond, with his hands firmly clasped behind his back. The gesture unnerved him, as did his words. "This way, Herr Bond. We've a private table for you."

That was the third time on premises that a face foreign to James Bond had identified him by name. Secrecy did not appear to be of great concern, and yet Bond had already been dealt a fat lot of pomp and circumstance, paid lip service to the art of discretion. The Old Haus was adamant, it seemed, in establishing some kind of hold over him. But, this was a negotiation, not a compel to arms, and Bond hadn't been under the yoke for several years. Those who knew him best at the end would wonder if he had ever been positioned as such.

"No," Bond curtly dismissed him.

"This way." Oblivious or obstinate, the slim figure, whom barely filled out his waistcoat, gestured admonishingly onward and then led the way down the row. Bond followed slowly, but purposefully, at a distance as to mind his surroundings. There was a kind of listlessness about the younger man. Nothing keen or on edge about him. He had his orders. Orders that he knew not the significance of but what the Haus told him. Bond sensed nothing but the intense concentration on the next spin of the wheel or the next cards dealt among the thuggery and new generation gangsters they passed.

The man who joined the line behind him, on the other hand, may have had the dress of a casino dealer, but he moved with the determined stride of a man who has just found his mark.

Nestled at the foot of the ornate quasi-portrait of the last generation's realm of power, an equally embellished door cast in deeply maroon (stained) wood revealed itself as their destination. It opened well before Bond's attendant reached it, ready and waiting for them.

Bond stopped sharply as a man who has been called to formation. He stood firmly on the blusterous pattern of a blue-black spade. The fellow following him halted and nearly toppled, finding his footing on a similarly elaborate club. Bond turned and regarded him with a plainly insincere and profoundly narrow smile. Then he returned to the younger and less involved gent. "I think I'd like to play with some company," he said.

The young man opened his mouth and found himself with nothing to add. He had not been scripted this far, his eyes glossed over in slightly flustered but still patently robotic chaos. The older, balding man with a fuller build and reddish face took up his mantle.

"Herr would be much more comfortable undisturbed in a private game." He signed to the door. A security man had appeared in its frame. He leered at Bond, who only briefly honored his presence and redirected his attention to the ongoing games.

The casino had seven tables, divided equally as possible on either side of 'chandelier row.' On the far hand side, where bond had entered, a small cluster of chrome finished railings sequestered a uniformly humble and unattended bar, convened where another game table might have sat. Dealers who were not attending tables acted as wait staff and prepared the drinks themselves. Not a busy night for spirits. Bond nodded in its direction. "I'll have a vodka martini."

Reasserted, the aflush dealer reached Bond in two very long steps. He took his hands out from behind his back and folded his arms across his belly, clasping one wrist in the palm of his hand. He was taller than Bond and tilted his head, cascading a glare down a long and perturbed expression. There was resoluteness in his voice. "Herr Bond, I must insist-"

"Bruise it," Bond interrupted authoritatively.

"What?"

"The vodka. I like it shaken, not stirred. Now off you pop." Bond slapped his arm and moved to join the nearest table.

Despite the abundance of available seating, the dealer working the table (the game at hand famously hailed all the way from Robstown, Texas) snapped at Bond like a spring-loaded trap nervously waiting to deploy. "There is no room at this table."

"I'll wait until the hand is finished and-"

"I cannot accommodate you." It sounded slightly desperate, more like a plea.

"Herr Bond-" His master's voice calling from behind. No doubt getting redder and redder. Fit to burst.

James eyed three attending players, who had taken no notice of him, yet. Two of the men were wearing matching shirts proclaiming love for a hell-spawned band of musicians. Their arms were visible and tattooed from forearms to fingertips. They seemed to have no qualms about seeing each other's cards. The third player sat several paces down and wore a simple suit that still managed to scream aloud its exuberance with the depth of its magenta intensity. Light seemed to skirt along its threads. He was gray complected and had a full mane of salt and peppered dreadlocks, bound together in a unifying bundle, stretching the length of his skull. His collar was open slightly, and Bond observed a small branding just under his laryngeal prominence. Two little runes. His companions also had them. Local thuggery.

From the looks of it, they were down quite a bit. The only one worried about it was the man dressed expensively enough to care. The hand ended when the dealer returned his attention to them. The purple man's pocket aces could not bail him out of the dealer's full house. His eyes ran from the table before his legs did. He stood, gravely in the midst of growing dissociation, and walked past Bond, trying to look anywhere but his feet. Bond stopped him and smiled.

"Abschiedsgeschenk," Bond rattled perfectly, and then slipped a plaque into his breast pocket.

After a brief appraisal, there was a swarm of repressed glee and dismay rolling in the swirls of the man's pupils. "Wofür?"

Bond shrugged. "Eine kleine Aufmerksamkeit des Haus," and then turned to the other two players, who, having seen the gift, had already begun to jolt out of their seats like hungry animals braying for a meal. Bond held out two crimson morsels.

"Danke," was said in unison, then they left, and Bond flashed his first earnest smile of the night. He sat down and without looking away from the green, felt weave in front of him, he said this to his keeper: "You can leave out the olives. If it's too oily, I'll send you back."

Bond did not see the exchange of glances that occurred then, or if he had, he would not have found the energy to quip. The vexed card handler who was not what he seemed moved to lay hands on his quarry and stopped cold.

His younger compatriot was gone, retreated to some hideaway where he could reset to default settings, and darkening the ingress that had desperately wanted to gobble Bond up, was no longer a bored security man who awaited orders with a zoo animal's disinterest. A higher beast had replaced him, ablaze with intent, transposing the entryway into a hearth. A right-angled jaw at the top of a lingering neck nodded slightly, and a message was passed without the disturbance of lips and barely the use of the sternocleidomastoids.

Bond could sit where he wanted. If he wanted a drink, get it. Nothing had changed. A red face dulled, and the martini was fetched.

Bond sat with his arms folded on the table, waiting for his cards. He was facing her but had not seen her. An omen, perhaps.

Xenia Onatopp sized James Bond up first.


	4. Chapter Four

_Author's Note: The author wishes to thank Famke Janssen for being Famke Janssen. That is all._

_#2: The author apologizes for his humor, which is awful, awful, awful._

_#3: Once again a small chapter, but it felt right._

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_Chapter Four_

_The Target_

She was tall, her shoes helped with that but only a little, and she moved airlessly, turning heads like spring-loaded clockwork. Bond would notice later after he gathered his senses again that she did this with some conscious effort. Other men would not have intercepted this tell, too troubled racing imaginary lines up and down her long avenues, but Bond would notice her conscious fight to appear unencumbered by a distinctly military stride, one whose rigidity didn't quite sit with open-toed high heels. _Would notice_, when he got around to it.

The first time James Bond saw Xenia Onatopp, he knew he'd have her. Actually, he had a suspicion she might have him, too. Exciting, yes, but all that might entail tightened much more than his loins. Even at this early a juncture in what would become their short affair, whatever ancient remnants of animal instinct remaining within mankind passed through him, and made the long turn around and caught him again on its way back to the primordial. Skin heated, hairline tensed, and the scent of one alpha predator reached another. This beast smelled of faded freesia and plum, and something else Bond couldn't quite detect, like a dissolving memory just out of recollection's reach.

Gloved fingers drummed on oak as does the soft paddle of spider's legs before the pounce.

"Good evening." Her voice was deep and firm, and even a little rough. Only in English, Bond surmised. In her native tongue, he bet, she could sing smoother tones. She inclined forward, driving right into Bond's personal space, and without a smile, silently invited (or dared?) Bond to take in the wholeness of her, and steal a glance at other things. He never broke eye contact. She could be savored, and besides, there was this needling feeling he had that if he looked away or if his eyes trespassed, she might lunge and sink her teeth in.

The table's former charge cleared his throat, and she broke her charm over the ex-secret agent, Bond realized. He also realized he hadn't breathed and let out a smooth and slow exhale as the ghostly woman dismissed the dealer and took over. "Play with me?" She returned, almost whimsical. Almost. It was faux, like her human countenance.

"I'm always up for playing with friends." Bond's eyes flashed coyly and held a small laugh. "Are we friends?"

She beamed. Her lips were so red. "Of course!"

Bond's drink arrived. "May I get you something?"

"You may." She was flat. Direct.

"What'll it be?"

"I'll have the same."

Bond nodded and went to pick up the glass and then stopped. His eyebrows popped as though just understanding something for the first time. Mere pantomime. "Here," he picked up the glass at the stem and placed it in front of her, unable to hide a crooked half-grin. "Have mine."

The red-faced dealer turned waiter pro tem leered gravely at the woman, who's ersatz geniality immediately melted away, as all the red retreated into a pursed-lip. He had flustered her, easily. A short-tempered woman, this one. She straightened.

"I have a feeling I might not hold my liquor very well tonight."

The drink was hastily removed, and the two did not speak for a long moment. An island had begun to form between them, and Bond started to wonder how long it would take the light to reach from one precipice to the other. He decided to take the plunge. With a heavy sigh, Bond placed his chin at the edge of his clasped fists. "Let's start with introductions. You are..."

"Xenia Onatopp. And you."

"You know my name." Playfulness had left him also, quite suddenly. "Why am I here, Xenia Onatopp?"

"To play with friends." Hers had returned. She had a deck of cards in her hand. She did not use the shoe. "I have invited another man to play," she enunciated strongly, "but you and I have to fetch him. Place some money on the table. You have only plaques. One hundred thousand dollars a hand. Let's be dangerous."

Bond remained unmoved. He did not vocalize right away, and the strength of his stare refused to waver as she delt a hand of blackjack anyway. When he did speak, finally, he sounded weary in his bones. Despite his swiftly developing agitation, he played along. "I'm not sure I have the petrol to make the stop. You'll have to chip in."

Xenia's eyes were dark and angry, not at him, just generally so. Bond's were suddenly quite hungry, and his agitation turned into something else and began to warm him a different way. She was pleased to see it and allowed her amber pinpoints to betray the same of her. They sparkled like her low hanging earrings. "You may get lucky." She let it sit a moment and then: "We'll see how the cards treat you on your own awhile?"

"Who is your other friend?" In other words, who was the target? He almost added: _And how am I supposed to go after him if I'm poisoned or locked in a black bag in the back of your damned casino?_

She seemed to sense the post-script on his developing frown. Delight reared itself on her features and peaked well before she delivered the coup de grace. Xenia looked at the hand dealt and then back at Bond, and he knew it would provoke him badly, and permanently in the split seconds before she relented. She saw it in him, and it made her feel good. It was at that singular space in between one moment and the next that she wanted him genuinely for the first time. That small spark of stifled terror and anticipation had won over the piece of meat which occupied the space just behind and slightly to the left of her breastbone, which pumped, tirelessly, her blood to the rest of her body. She would have him. It was practically a song when she rendered the first note. "A friend of yours, too. Alec Trevelyan."

It was Bond's turn to be flustered. He stood straight out of his chair.


	5. Chapter Five

_Author's Note: I hope Bond blowing hot and cold as often as he does will not detract. I am attempting (with limited if any success I am sure) to capture the emotionally turbulent portrayal of Bond by Dalton._

* * *

_Chapter Five_

_The Money_

"Don't be angry, my love." Xenia's eyes had glazed over now, and she sat down, far from spent, it would take much more than that, but she was satisfied. "You've won the hand."

She had dispensed both sets of cards face up, revealing Bond's hand. Xenia had a pair of sixes. At twelve, she was obliged to hit. A pointless gambit, considering Bond's perfect twenty-one, delivered courtesy of an ace and the suicidal king of hearts. Another six joined her ranks. Her impish arrangement would never be adequately appraised by Bond, who was no longer with her in the room. He was playing out a sequence over and over in his head.

It is said that when you shoot someone by surprise while they are mid-sentence, even in the head, sometimes they keep on talking for a few more seconds before slumping over. And there was Xenia, in the afterglow, her body having missed the cue, still hanging a dead man over Bond's head. The bullet was nestled inside of her, nagging her like a newborn crooning for mother's milk. Then she straightened, straightened forever, and crumbled. It played again and again, trying to lower the temperature inside his skull.

He stood there, aflame, in near stroke inducing fever, and vacillated between rage and nausea. His hand dutifully took charge and reflexively dipped into his jacket, looking for his Walther PPK. He could see the third eye ruining the porcelain landscape, but his gun was elsewhere. He remembered baldy, and instead, he pulled out a black, gunmetal cigarette case and flipped it open with an almost haphazard insouciance. Like the click of a light switch, a hypnotic-like coolness had snuffed his rage as quickly as a closing circuit.

Xenia could read his suffering so easily, and this feeling, also, delighted her. And from the white dwarf that been her entryway into her lust for Bond reignited again. She bit down onto the inside of her mouth hard enough to draw blood when he offered her a smoke. She moved to pluck a cigarette, but he withdrew the case, handled one, lit it, and after a drag long enough to deprive her of the full stick, he handed it to her and sat down again. "My winnings?"

She let him see the three gold bands on the filter brush against her tongue before she closed on it. After a few drafts, she found her nerves and her wanting had not cooled. She wanted to see him writhe some more, but the man was locked far away. The machine was operating now, and it would not allow the light to shine on her again.

With the flick of her eyes, several stacks of ruby bricks lined up on the table. Bond never looked at them. He lit a cigarette of his own and let the Diplomates' tobacco soak a lining inside his lungs. "You can confirm he's alive. You've seen his face." A quarry not delivered as such. Inflection had abandoned him.

"I have been in his bed." There was an unintentional note of revulsion that she knew gave away more than she was willing to part with. It wouldn't matter after tonight.

Bond gave no indication that he'd noticed. He had. It quelled a tiny glint of pain he didn't have a name for. "Timetable?"

"I meet with him tonight."

"Where?"

"Not far from here."

"Good. I'll meet you upstairs. You can explain on the way." His inflection returned with guttural alarm.

Bond left without collecting the money, knowing three things. One. He had lost this exchange. Two. He had regretted not shooting Xenia. And Three. He had walked into someone's hurriedly made trap. But, he wasn't sure who manned the guillotine. He fully intended to stick his head in the lunette and find out, but first, he needed to make a phone call.


	6. Chapter Six

_Chapter Six_

_Dark Thoughts in Kurhaus_

James Bond had wanted rid or the Service for a long time. As he sat in the dark, waiting for a tapster to rise from amongst the fallen at the bar in Lambrecht Kurhaus, he tried (he often had) to zero in on the moment that he had started hating it. There had to be one singular moment, didn't there? That all-encompassing epiphany that rang louder than the silencer's dull thudded delivery. Wasn't there some tender saying about young light leaving their eyes? A sentiment fit for embroidery on sackcloth. No, there was no one event. Disillusionment is an experience, and when Bond murdered Alec Trevelyan, it had merely taken its place in the pantheon of the Double-O's disaffection. It was by no means a beginning, he told himself.

Bond very much needed a drink, but not an oily martini or a pretentious glass of bubbles that François Taittinger might offer. He shared Monsieur Taittinger's spirits many times with Alec, who would now not leave his thoughts alone. His reflections ran farther away. No, he did not want wine. He wanted a cold, skunky bottle of Corona and he wanted to sit, far overdressed, on a Florida coast and toast his retirement. And Felix would be there, in Bermuda shorts, and would shrug away Bond's worries, and know what to say to ease the mind. Plain-spoken and too straightforward for a CIA man, was Felix, and he cleared the air like the snap of an electric current. James owed the old bastard a visit. He'd never believe James was retired.

He'd threatened to quit so many times. With a snort or a stifled laugh. Bond was not to be taken seriously. Ironically, jokingly. Like suicide, how often that is an overture to action that none hear coming. And then there had been Isthmus City. With a cover story as paper thin as the mimeograph paper it was written on, MI6 put into the files that a foreign landowner (and drug baron) had been skeletonized by a Double-O over stinger missiles and cocaine. What a whopper of a victory it was. Oh how damned proud they were of their boy. The world slept safer, indeed.

For my friend, rang the motive through the halls of MI6. Yes, Franz Sanchez was a nasty little man who meant very little in the grand scheme, except that he had maimed Felix (old friend Felix) and let his goons have their way with his late wife. And all this because Felix had yelled checkmate early. And that mattered to nobody else but James Bond and the parts of Felix Leiter that the shark found indigestible.

And every man who had made their business _this business_, every professional who knew that there had been a breach from which there was no return, every one of them had shaken James Bond's hand and welcomed him right back like nothing had happened. Even Father. Father who had only spared his life to avoid exposure. Father who would have gladly let his security detail gun him down if the foliage at Hemingway House had been just a little denser. And Father had said 'Good Show.' Father had said 'So Glad To Be Rid of Another Drug Lord.' The prodigal son had been commended. A real commendation, mind, not the fake one they gave Alec to cover up the fact that he was a bastard traitor. No, say it. Rogue Agent. But, not in the same acceptable way James Bond had been. James Bond, who had spat upon the empty plot marked Trevelyan. James Bond, who had made a chemical weapons facility in Arkhangelsk the genuine resting place of Double-O Six.

For My Family, Alec had begged.

Not Good Enough, the Service had proclaimed.

And then there had been Mother. Loving Mother, who had buried Father. Mother, who at a small briefing at Vauxhall Cross read Bond's file in front of him while he stood at attention, and in less than twelve minutes out from laying eyes upon him had executed him. Expedited his wishes. And Mother had said, 'Good Show, Old Boy.' 'You Served Us Well.'

Brilliant, he had thought. Retirement at last. Damned bloody business. It was a Good Show, but I've had my fill, gents. Brilliant, he thought now, sitting not quite alone, surrounded by other relics.

He undid the shoelace knot holding his tie in place and pulled it off in one slick yank that echoed a channel far too deeply into the vacuum. He dug noisly in his hip pocket until he produced a mobile phone smaller than the latest models you'd find commercially. And yet it was a souvenir of yesteryear.

He wondered if the Kurhaus had been bugged in anticipation of his arrival. And decided he didn't care. He dialed a number. It rang at least a baker's dozen. The line finally picked up, and the man on the other end could sense Bond's factitious smile before he spoke.

"Hello, Uncle," Bond said.


	7. Chapter Seven

_Chapter Seven_

_Phone Call_

Mrs. Boothroyd almost let it ring away. Almost. From the depths of her sleep, the ringer sounded no different than the old kettle cradle that the house still used, and only when the answering machine didn't pick up, the small part of her brain that was still running immediately registered a problem. An innate skill picked up from marrying into the Service.

Half awake now, she nudged her husband, who might have snorted something in response, but she wasn't there enough yet to discern. She laid in wait, while her extremities found purpose, hoping whoever it was calling would give up the ghost. But, they wouldn't. And there was only one reason for that at the midnight hour. Her Majesty's Servant was being summoned. She nudged her husband again. "It's for you."

"Geoffrey." The form next to her was rigid and very still, in repose, she reckoned. She couldn't feel the covers respond to the risings of his chest. After forty years, he'd yet to learn. She goosed him.

"Heaven's sake, Bedelia!" Geoffrey Boothroyd, of Q Branch, pulled back a heavy cover blanket that featured light pink roses dancing ever increasing tangles through their vines and dumped the ruffled mess onto his wife. He turned on his side and slid his bottom half off the bed as delicately as an acrobat trying to keep their bottom on a balance beam. He wasn't as sturdy as he had been, and considered the journey carefully before he let his feet find his slippers.

The house he stumbled through had the same problem as the sheets, by way of a distinctly floral arrangement. The walls had an insipid offwhite hospital inspired wallpaper with faded bluebonnets stamped every other square. Even in the pitch dark, the flowers seemed to glow and light the way to the flat's foyer. His wife's idea. He could stand it, but just hardly. He hated his home feeling like one big sick room.

He placed his hand on the receiver and realized something. He looked down the hallway and half expected to see his wife leering out of the shadows. Her crinkled nose did the frowning when she thought him up to no good, but wasn't that his trade? Next to the phone, there was a small picture of a little lad. His bib was the same color as the faded flowers on the walls, and eerily, he wore the same wrinkles in the same places his grandmother did.

Boothroyd clasped the framed photo with a gnarled hand he refused to believe was his own, never to admit, even under sodium pentothal, that it still checked out as his under the new fingerprint scanners at Vauxhall Cross. He twisted the frame until he heard a snap. The side table's woodgrain top opened like a lid. He carelessly flipped it on its hinge. The facsimile phone and picture bobbed back and forth, securely fastened.

Inside the cabinet, there was a vibrating brick that looked like a military grade walkie-talkie, foam fitted into a little alcove. Just below it, running the full length of the display, tucked just as snuggly, was an angry looking Patchett Machine Carbine. The ports had long cooled. The vents were clear. The last time it had hit home was 1953. It could still do the job if requested and required.

Boothroyd's stomach turned like a key twisting inside a bolt that it doesn't belong. For right now, the brick was far more dangerous than the gun. He picked it up, extended the antenna, and pressed TALK on the keypad.

"Hello, Uncle," the voice said.

The older man stammered, and a wash old memories flooded over him, but he'd be damned if he'd let James Bond hear him falter.

"Just when I thought I was rid of you," he growled. He was Q again.

"I'll always spare a thought for you, old man." Que the pregnant pause that had launched a million punchlines. "Did Bedelia get my flowers?"

"Oh grow up, James."

"They were for you," Bond protested. "I told her to leave them at the rest home for you. "

"Rest home!" Q instantly regretted adding to noise pollution. The heavy footfalls of his partner echoed down the hall, and when the bathroom door signaled a reprieve, he strained to keep himself at a whisper. "I'm still on active duty, unlike a certain delinquent I know."

Bond waited an interminable moment. "They were Lupinus Havardii," he lamented with faux distress.

Q imagined that boyish earnestness that only Bond could fake with a wry turn of his lips. Add a few canary feathers, and you captured the essence of the man. "The Big Bend bluebonnet," Q mumbled.

"I know how Bee loves western-American kitsch."

Above the side table, a pale stetson that could fit King Kong wore the wall and pervaded the room. Q suddenly felt an urgency to reach the point. "You don't make social calls, James."

"No."

"I can't issue you weapons. You know that. Not like the old days."

"Yes."

"What can I do for you, Double-O Seven?" Q nearly apologized. It was a slip of the tongue, owed to the resurgence of an old camaraderie that was missed — yes, dearly missed. He wanted to hang up.

If Bond took offense, he didn't sound like it. "Well, speaking of delinquents, I appear to be on the trail of a mutual friend of ours. I need information and I was hoping you might break your oath to the Official Secrets Act without letting Mother know."

Without hesitation. "Of course, what's the name?"

Bond sighed and with it exhaled the final breath of his long and exalted career. "I think Alec Trevelyan might still be alive."

"Impossible!" Q's voice cracked. "You shot him."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time, and then James Bond told a story that resembled a report that had been filed in 1986, a statement that had a hard copy, and sat in a dusty, stagnant little storage box at some undisclosed location where MI6 kept its older accounts. The man who wrote that report was James Bond, Double-O Seven, who had been debriefed on the matters enclosed, namely the resolution of the Chemical Weapons Factory at Arkhangelsk, and the sanctioning of the site's destruction as a cover for the termination of a compromised agent inside the Double-O program. The report recorded success on both counts.

That report was a fabrication.

Next Chapter: Operation Cowslip (1986)


	8. Chapter Eight

_Author's Note: I used the GoldenEye novelization by JOHN GARDNER as a reference to help with this chapter. Great book, by the way, very Fleming-esque._

* * *

_Chapter Eight_

_Operation Cowslip (1986) Part I_

Alec Trevelyan should have known something was wrong when the spotter plane never left the runway. For eight hours overnight, he watched the long stretch of snow-beaten concrete from his small vantage point near the dam's guard site. The small aircraft had been identified by reconnaissance as the primary watch for the area. It had a set flight pattern that you could bank on. It would run the limits of the restricted area, scoping for climbers stupid enough to scale these mountains, then it would plunge into the heart-or, in this case, the gorge-before arcing over the dam. All in all, this took about twenty minutes.

This had been accounted for when Alec left the Drop Zone. His parka, an oldy but a goody from his friends at Q Branch, had been specifically designed to work with his jumpsuit. The weather was cold and still, and when the noisy buzz of the captured German songbird echoed from the range, a retractable ripcord could be employed to release a kind of parachute that would wrap around and cacoon a single man. The materials had been treated to give off an ice-like quality that would fool a spotter at night if you nuzzled down in a patch of snow. It also masked his heat signature.

He'd never heard it. At regular intervals up the quarter-mile hike to target, Alec would find an outcropping in the rocks and hunker, waiting. And nothing. Worrisome, but he chalked the deviation up to Colonel Ourumov, who undoubtedly was trying to make things easier on him. Alec did not appreciate the gesture and would be sure to make that known to his confederate when they were very far from here. Leave it to a KGB Border Guards to have gall enough to make life easier on a Double-O. He who had been trained by a Soviet military academy to use a knife and fork. He, who was chosen only for his relatively good position for advancement. Alec had brought to heel greater killers than Ourumov. But, the good killers so rarely had security in futures. Not once, until it was too late, did Alec consider that there was any other problem.

He found home at the time of the nightly shift change. The mission was to begin at the morning turn around, so he kept the guard's company. Less than fifty yards away, Alec bedded down in a cramped alcove and checked his gear. Enough firepower to level entire floor of embedded iron and cement was strapped around his chest. It would do more than that with the fuel inside the facility. The rope he was using to fasten it all was of a specially made elastic just for today. When properly wired, the Arkhangelsk Chemical Factory would be ashes, and Alec would powder his coffin with that dust.

From the litany of pouches, he pulled out his weapon of choice. A small, palm-sized canister with a screw top. He toasted the future and drank. Another pouch provided a small gunmetal rectangle. He squeezed it, which caused a springloaded expansion, the addition of a viewfinder. Then he went onto the watch. The moonlight was bright, and it helped.

There were the ominously inconspicuous buildings, uneven, darkly drab and almost invisible against the range. The runway in front of the somber installation shot along to the deadly drop and then rushed into the gorge. Entryway, official. That weary old Fiesler Storch just sat there at the top of the track. Anybody could just waltz right up.

The dam would be his first stop. He couldn't yet see it because of the stout guard station that sat nearby. It stood at the edge of the precipice. On one side of it was the man-made lake, on the other an eight hundred foot drop. A cyclone fence behind it led along the dam's walkway. Entry point, Double-O Six.

At dawn, when the guard change had settled down, and he was sure the spotter would once again remain grounded, he moved.

Daylight began at 4 a.m., and fifteen minutes past the hour, the guard exchange would take place. They (two of them) would come through the gate, bang thricely on the heavy steel door and without pleasantries the deed was done. However, recon had established that the morning routine had an encore performance of sorts, that would take place at promptly, strictly punctual mind you, at half past the hour - a production worthy of the Russian State Ballet of Siberia. Alec dubbed it, _The Relieving of the Guard._

The guard emerged and stood halfway between Alec and home, in the blind spot of the station's viewports to gain himself a measure of privacy. He was positioned as to see Alec running, soundless, up to him, but he too busy fumbling with himself, never saw it coming. The man's urine, splashing carelessly onto the ground, made more noise than the Browning's subdued delivery.

Alec had to flip him over to get his key. He pressed himself against the wall and slid along, ducking his head when necessary until he reached the door.

The other man was hunched over a table, making way with an unwrapped parcel of brown bread, parsley, a slice of cheese, and two eggs. He had finished revealing the first and was mid peel through the second when a salty, rustic, and decidedly metallic flavoring overtook the cilantro. The skinned egg went surprisingly untarnished, so Alec ate it. Then he stripped off the parka, unraveled the bungee rope from his chest, carefully making sure that he resecured the timers and explosives inside his black jumpsuit. When he was finished and satisfied that nothing would jostle loose, he slammed his fist into the big red button that operated the gate as though he were freezing a stopwatch. Even with a snack, he was making excellent time, though now only in a race with himself. Well, not quite just himself. _Let's see James Bond match that._

Bond had better be in place, or this entire thing would be a scrub. Arragont little prig, how Alec adored him. Never before, and never again would he have a comrade like James Bond. A shame it was for Alec to have to be the better man.

James Bond's specter sprinted behind him down the walk and did not fade from his mind until Alec stood himself onto the guardrail and peered into the jagged abyss below. Rocks that were not rocks at all, but camouflage, invited him into the depths.

He stood there a while longer, perhaps, than he should. Of course, had the spotter plane been up in the air, his time table would have been much different, but now he had the time to property steel himself. And something occurred to him. He and Bond had been friends for a long time, and so far, he hadn't actually committed any crime that couldn't be forgiven. He thought, maybe, he could let it all go.

And then he laughed. The wind smothered the awful sound of it. He clicked the clip into place, slid his right foot into the noose, and leaped. Locked inside the blearing resistance, Alec thought: _You only live twice._

Next Chapter: Operation Cowslip (1986) Part II


	9. Chapter Nine

_Chapter Nine_

_Operation Cowslip (1986) Part II (or 0.5)_

Three days before the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility became his tomb, Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, thirty-six, stared into his dressing mirror and lamented his resemblance to his late father. It didn't really bother him until he was in his uniform. There was a kind of morbid fascination he had, watching his reflection put on all of the pieces, losing all of the little nuances that separated Arkady from Andrey. His heart fell every time the elder Ourumov found his way back. But, soon, he told himself, with just the slightest removal of a couple of stars from a ribbon, Arkady would come back.

The anticipation of the future had allowed Colonel Ourumov to oversleep. Something that had been delicately frowned upon by his chief of staff. He was awake, really, but he wanted the boy to be forced to climb the scaffolding, to trod through the halls past the work of other men, to reach the Colonel, and rouse him from his slumber, finesse his commander from his covers.

The fair-haired, spectacled son of a Vasilevsky, who was only here for the 'experience,' whose career had been made on The Don before he was a twinkle in an eye, had been taught only how to keep his margins shined and glossed. Embarrassing underachievement could cower behind a legacy, and he had been kicked upstairs by more exceptional minds than his. Even Ourumov, someday soon, would be expected to write letters of recommendation on the boy's behalf. And he would, gladly, knowing that whatever future the child had awaiting him, Ourumov would now be there ahead of him. Always ahead. He earned it.

The boy had entered after knocking with a distinctly annoyed, but profusely subservient rap. Ourumov answered Vasilevsky before he touched the covers, hoping to make him jump. "Wait outside."

"The inspector is here." There was an air of irritation in all their encounters, but especially in recent weeks when it became clear that Vasilevsky's position in the Colonel's bedchamber had not offered him special prerogatives in uniform. He was the chief the staff, yes, but he acted as if a casual repartee with Ourumov might afford him the respect that the older man had no intention giving. He would never be invited to sleep, and when he entered that room in a uniform, he would be at Ourumov's heel. What was the difference?

The answer was quick, delivered almost before Captain Vasilevsky had finished speaking. "I have heard of no such inspection."

"I believe that's the point, sir."

There was stillness then, perhaps some faining hope that the problem would remain on the shoulders of a lesser man. And for a moment the air crackled with a reprimand that Ourumov could sense coming, and then from under the covers, he smiled as it dissipated. Good boy. He spoke when he was ready to. "Did you bring my breakest?"

"No. You can call down for it," said with an impudent tone. "The inspector is waiting-" He never finished. With a shard of his spectacles still lodged his eye socket, Captain Vasilevsky fetched breakest. The tray warbled not once. The Colonel's eggs tasted of salt, tears, and iron. The boy would later sit in the infirmary, quietly promising that he'd get even, that'd he'd send the old bastard to a Siberian post where the only thing that would visit Arkady Ourumov would be the bear who graced his gravesite with its droppings.

He did not know this, and if he did, he likely would not care, but his thoughts mirrored the same sentiment of the late Samara Ourumov about her late husband, Andrey. Samara, who thought she had married up, who found out differently and had done something about it. But, Vasilevsky would need not retaliate, for retribution, of a sort, was waiting about forty feet above his head, standing on the factory floor, waiting.

In his chambers, where great pains had been made to make him comfortable surrounded by concrete and stone, Ourumov turned away from the mirror and strode on a silk carpet runner that disguised the crudity of the installation's accommodations. At his dressing table, the metal tray from breakfast was tarnishing the polish. The food, three eggs lightly scrambled and kolbasa, had been picked at. The Syrniki, prepared only for Arkangel's commander, was untouched. If only he had known that this moment would be his last to ever savor it without a looming dread.

On the way down, he remembered he had not asked Vasilevsky where the inspector could be found. He had to question nearly a dozen people as he roamed the stark, unforgiving corridors. Besides salutes he did not bother himself with returning, he found them wanting and himself angering. What right did Moscow have to a spot inspection? And to ask it of he who had graduated from the School of Applied Military Science in Kiev with top marks, he who had been promoted to Major at twenty-five, he who had endured Afgan hospitality without protest, he who was meant for better things than guarding noxious compounds that caused rashes to blister on the asses of western troglodytes. Compounds and substances the cowards in Moscow had no intention of ever using.

Ourumov had worked himself up into a boil by the time he found the inspector, and when he saw him, his blood ran cold. He'd known who it was before he turned around.

He was standing on the floor of the manufacturing plant. He was wearing a white lab coat and hardhat over the spartan simplicity that was his uniform like everyone else, but unlike the others, who were focusing not their work but on this man observing, he seemed disinterested, almost vacant and unaware of the skittering happening around him. That vacancy was filled when his eyes met with Ourumov's.

The Colonel stood bewildered on a high, suspended walkway, and after a fashion, he made it down the scaffolding steps without tumbling down to the Double-O's feet. When Ourumov was within arm's length of the man, he scoffed. Yes, it was him. He'd made no effort to obscure himself, but then again, he would be unaware that Alec Trevelyan had passed Ourumov his picture. But this was not what had been agreed upon.

The infiltration was three days from now. MI6 would send two agents, Trevelyan and Bond, to blow up the factory and the stage would be set. And yet standing with Ourumov, under a comma of black hair, with a dimpled smile that hung over a cleft chin that would have put Errol Flynn out of business, was James Bond.

"Good morning," Bond said in perfect Russian. "I am Captain Ivanov. I am here to inspect your site."

Ourumov didn't know what to do. If he outed Bond, then he would have to answer as to how he knew this was a British agent. Then it occurred that he could cover by angrily demanding a communique with Moscow over the insult of sending an uninvited inspector. Command would then deny having sent one. Unless of course, Bond had intercepted a real agent of the state and terminated him. Damn it, this was far too complicated. He should have never trusted Trevelyan. It was all English trickery.

As if on cue. "Here are my credentials, sir." Bond handed him a metal clipboard that had a cover on it. "I suggest you read this carefully." Bond regarded the storage vats behind Ourumov. "Right here, right now," he added gravely.

With a look of disdain that was not well hidden, the Soviet Commander considered the importance of the next few seconds and then lifted the gray rectangular protection off of the clipboard. If Ourumov had eaten his breakfast, Bond might have very well been covered in quark and raisins. The Colonel felt the proverbial goose (or was it a bear) step across his grave.

Next Chapter: Operation Cowslip (1986) Part III


	10. Chapter Ten

_Chapter Ten_

_Operation Cowslip (1986) Part III (or 0.5 continued)_

The office was situated, in fact, it gave the illusion of suspension, overlooking one of the lesser laboratories where special hazard suits were not required. Colonel Ourumov would not be bothered going through a decontamination ritual every time he retired to his official sanction over Arkangel operations. His convenience was to be looked after, and indeed, much like the confines of his nook, the office space looked to Bond like a smaller rendition of M's at Universal Exports. The walls had been made to look like wood grain (it might actually have been genuine) despite being surrounded on all sides by metal roof paneling. More than a tad ostentatious for one Soviet Colonel looking after toxic waste. The door was tarpaulin for God's sake. And the smell, like bleach, stung in the insides of his mouth and nose. How Ourumov could enjoy a drink, Bond didn't know. It was a colossal waste of La Maison Whisky. But, then again, this was not a pleasurable exchange or a glass tipped in celebration.

Bond and the Colonel sat across a desk from one another as two officers might meet for a briefing, a bull session, or dinner plans (perhaps all points in-between). Bond kept his hands plainly visible in his lap. His hardhat had been discarded somewhere between the factory assembly and the lab below. He was armed and could reach his weapon (an angry little PPK) before the Russian could palm so much as the shame between his legs. That wasn't going to happen, Bond knew, of course. Ourumov had been well scouted for his love of 'life,' and his indulgence in it was well known by the right people. He would take the deal.

The desk was dark, clean, and polite, smartly maintained by military discipline. Usually, the only permanent residents were a small metal basket for papers that were scheduled to leave his sight, a banker's lamp, and a leather blotter two shades lighter than the desk's finish. Today, those accouterments were accompanied by a decanter (the libation on offer a spirit from the La Maison du Whisky in Paris right around the corner from Madeleine Church), the decanter's very large, square head, and the contents of the dubious inspector's clipboard.

There were pages. There was a small stack of these leaves that had been gently set aside. These were Bond's forged, but well-manufactured documentation identifying him as Captain Lakov Ivanov, which had been designed only to get him through the front door, so to speak. Once inside, his way out was up to the mound being gloomily perused by Ourumov. Bond could already read the resignation in other man's gaze. Ourumov sipped his beverage absently, but steadily. He refused to be the one who broke the silence.

Bond did it for him. To Double-O Seven's credit, he respected the gravity of the moment. The documents (some of them were pictures) sealed the man's fate. Bond spoke without inflection. "Do you need it explained to you? I can do that for you."

Ourumov scoffed. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

The hard way, then. "Shall we talk about Andrey, your father."

"Excuse me," Ourumov withheld a bark, and it caused his voice to crack, like a man who has been caught red-handed by the police and begins to panic. For a moment, Bond thought he saw a desperate mania enter the man's flushed countenance, but it extinguished itself if it had ever been there. "My father's name was Grigor. Your precious MI6 could figure that much, yes? Grigorovich is my middle name. Or need I translate it for you? That's Gregory, in English, I believe."

"Grigor, yes. That's the name your mother knew him by," Bond said, unchanged. "And at least the name you used for him when she was around, but you knew. It's all there in front of you. His name was Andrey when he collaborated with the Nazis. You knew before she did. But when she found out-"

Ourumov raised his free hand.

Bond quieted, but when the Russian showed no sign of further contribution, he continued, albeit around a different corner. "Hilfswilliger, a RONA soldier under the flag of St. Andrew. Your mother-"

"My mother loved him." Ourumov was distant, sluggish. A wave of inebriation swept him.

"Is that why she poisoned him?"

"No." The retorted sounded off a little too loud for both men's comfort.

"And what about the shining star of the School of Applied Military Science, who paid off the right people for his mother's committal and drugging. She still managed lucidity every now and again until the end, Arkady. She spoke of your father, and when she did, there were ears that heard and wires that recorded. We traced him, Arkady."

Ourumov wanted to know how he had obtained that information, but it didn't really matter. It was true, and it meant a death sentence if he were exposed. "What do you want, Bond?"

"Let's talk about our mutual friend, who is visiting in a few days. You're quite close, you and Alec Trevelyan. You both have fathers who fought in the name of the Reich."

Trevelyan's fate was sealed before he ever touched boots on ground.

_Next chapter: Operation Cowslip (1986) Part IV_


	11. Chapter Eleven

_Chapter Eleven_

_Operation Cowslip (1986) Part IV_

Captain Adrik Vasilevsky spent much of his time the next three days accommodating the inspector from Moscow. Apparently, after a very brisk tour of the facility, he found that he did not like what he saw, and after a full day of reassigning the staff in the laboratories and production, it was decided that he would be staying to facilitate significant changes to safety procedure.

In making his rounds, Vasilevsky could feel the tenseness radiating off of the men assigned at Arkangel, none more so than Colonel Ourumov, who had turned the most wondrous shade of green, a kind of dusky complexion of something that has spoiled. He had the look of a man who might lose his commission.

Vasilevsky, on the other hand, felt quite a lot better despite the extra workload. Today, as Alec Trevelyan prepared to ambush a man who was misspelling his own name in the snow, the young captain's step was light and airy, completely unaware that he would be dead in less than five minutes.

The metal door did not translate his neurotically gleeful mood through his drumming fingers. He was standing about two levels below the factory floor, in storage wing B, where he had personally cleaned out a closet space so Captain Ivanov could rest. Officer quarters were offered as space was in short supply, even Vasilevsky had offered his own, but the inspector demanded very little and had helped clear the area. He invited Vasilevsky to coffee after. He asked about the repaired cut on his eyelid and seemed to sense the truth behind the younger man's evasiveness. They spoke of home, too.

Vasilevsky went from the womb straight into the service. He attended the Timoshenko NBC Protection Military Academy, established in 1932 in response to the rising fascist tide and committed to the defense of the motherland through the use of chemical warfare. Ivanov was impressed but seemed much more interested in Vasilevsky's home life. And he listened more than he spoke, only interrupting to laugh knowingly, understandingly.

In civilian life, Vasilevsky had a home with a widowed mother, who he saw all too little these days. He certainly heard enough from her, an almost daily reminder to visit had made him the joke among some of his peers. He deliberately could not recall the nicknames, though he knew them all too well. In spite of the ribbing he took, he still felt that no better place was at home, where the warmth was genuine, the coffee rich, and company apposite.

After the third knock, Vasilevsky tried the door. It was locked. He called for the inspector by name. Then he went for the door keypad and typed in its preassigned code. The digital reader flashed red and whirred irritatingly, like a small animal whose tail you've just stepped on. Strange. The storage rooms all had the same four-digit code and did not rotate like the door locks guarding the laboratories upstairs.

Vasilevsky was reassigned to aid Ivanov in any way possible as his personal assistant. This meant avoiding Ourumov except for the daily briefings. It also meant being invited to discuss the regimen of the day at breakfast with Ivanov, instead of explaining away bruises in the infirmary. The work ahead was extensive, and Ivanov spoke as though he might become a semi-permanent resident. He had been issued codes for every restricted area on the base, but how had he changed them? And why? Did he think Vasilevsky would not respect his privacy?

He plugged in the code three more times before letting a small dose of frustration flush him. He so looked forward to the new morning routine. And he would not go back to the old way willingly, not for a while at least. He wanted hot coffee and polite conversation. He wanted Ivanov to shield him from the harm that surely awaited him if he reported to the Colonel instead.

He input Ourumov's master code and let himself in. It was the two steps he took inside that ultimately cost him. Had he stayed outside and waited just a few more seconds, he would have seen Lakov (they were on a first name basis when they were alone) turn the corner and approach. Lakov would have greeted him warmly, and strolled with him a while, and when the time came, he would have let the young blond-headed boy escape with the others. A boy who had yet truly begun to become sick with his experiences, who was still young enough to heal and forget. Lakov had enjoyed their chats, and although it would never be anything more than that, he did not believe, personally, that Captain Adrik Vasilevsky to be a bad person, and he believed, personally, that he did not need to die. And then the poor boy took two steps too many.

The light switch was next to the door, but Adrik fumbled twice before getting the light on. It was a bare room (its occupants, stacked uniformly to the ceiling, usually needed no comfort) with a small cot pressed against one side. There was a pitcher of untouched fresh water and a cup arranged on a tray that sat, almost portrait-esque on a crate that served as a minute bedside table. On the cot there was a form, but Adrik never looked at it. If he had examined closer, he would have found that it was a hazard suit, laid out like clothes for work. He was more concerned with the row of explosive charges that had been neatly arranged along the floor at the far wall. They were no bigger than two fists pressed together. Lakov's suitcase bag, which he had insisted on carrying himself into his new lodgings, lay discarded.

While Double-O Six slowly worked his way through the vents of Arkangel, Captain Vasilevsky inhaled sharply. Then his head snapped forward.


	12. Chapter Twelve

_Chapter Twelve_

_Operation Cowslip (1986) Part V_

Alec fired the piton with his eyes closed. It made a dull, metal noise when it hit the camouflage rock. Then, he felt himself pull. Something popped in his back, and each revolution of the little gear inside the gun sent shockwaves up and down his spine. Each dalliance with pain ended in an icy cold cascade of numbness. And when the bungee started to fight, beads of sweat formed around his hairline. There was a moment when he thought he might not muster the force to unfasten his ankle. He smiled through the torture when it did.

Alec thought the bungee might snap back like a rubber band, igniting an echo up the dam wall, but it made nary a sound. Within moments the sweat was drying into a thin layer of cold wetness, and Double-O six was crisscrossing through the rocks toward the central air duct where he would infiltrate the facility. When he found it, he saw that the vent's ribbons had been cut into a jagged swirl to better conceal it.

A magician's sleight of hand revealed what looked like an empty pen casing. It behaved more like a car plug for a cigarette lighter, though if you tried to use this one to ignite, you'd give yourself a brand new lipless smile. There was a hard click when he pressed the business (open) end against the edges of the cover where the bolts ought to be. The hiss sounded like bacon frying. It smelled like sulfur. Finally, the little cylinder slid into place, and as it cooled, it clamped down and pulled.

In the darkness of the tunnels, Alec found peace. He had to admit if he were honest, and he rarely was, that he was not at his best on the dam. The inside of his head was buzzing, a beehive of a thousand different competing thoughts. There was excitement, an almost euphoric sense of it, mixing with a cocktail of dread and fear. These were things not uncommon for an operative before the execution, but the moment at hand was so delicate, so dependant on the wind being in the right direction. It could go badly, and that thrilled him somehow.

Of course, it had already, and he was doomed, but that was in his future. Right now, it was dark, and inside it you see nothing, feel nothing, are nothing. Like the pain of the tightening bungee, anxiety and doubt cascaded down, down to the deep, where the machine left the man behind and returned to the surface alone — the man who remembered.

There is an old saying at MI6 that is sometimes used as a training philosophy for its agents. It is a matter of some somewhat facetious discussion among agents, operatives who do not have a Double-O number. To those who carry the designation, it is a severe matter, a mantra, said only in wartime. James Bond laughed emptily at its mention, but he knew it. Very well, so much so that he said it to himself like a prayer before Go. He was saying it right now below as Captain Vasilevsky's orbitals fled the comfort of his skull, and Alec Trevelyan, about to betray everything he was taught by it, said it now, buried alone in the pit while the machine above started the engine burning.

_Ego lapis. Et non sentiunt. Faciam ut alii sentiunt._

Even before the driver had done its work on the wall vent, Alec could sense the elevated commotion. The facility was on routine scheduling, and he thought for a moment that Bond's cover had blown, and then he had to stifle a laugh. Ourumov knew his role, and one of them was letting James Bond slide unempeeded. With that kind of hand-holding, how could Bond fail? No, today would be an excellent success for James and MI6, but at significant cost. The death of Alec Trevelyan. What a noble sacrifice. He could shed a tear.

He let the vent cover hit the floor of the bathroom. It struck the throne before it settled in the stall. The loo was unoccupied, so strict silence wasn't an issue. It would be soon. Gotta pee theory. Another MI6 credo. He had to move. He dropped down soundlessly onto the lid, and in less than ten seconds he had the stall open, and he was at the door checking his pathway.

Stone and metal found symmetry, following in and out of each other. The halls were brightly lit, the steel exacting and precisely regimented. He only had time to quickly peek, as the source of the commotion, a flock of khaki and green, stormed past him. The bathroom sat off of the main corridor catty-cornered from the main stairs. The men moved single file into the concrete shaft where the stairs lay. Were they going up or down? The upper level was the mess, officer quarters, kitchen, and at the top, was the runway. Below was the medical facility, the factory proper, labs, and storage.

On his left hip, there were two holsters. One carried the piton, in the other, his Browning BDA eagerly awaited its new assignment. He granted its wish. When the path was clear, Alec moved.

Steps sounded large and cumbersome inside the shaft. He could hear conversations echoing down from above. He could not make out precisely what was said, but one thing was clear. There was a mass exodus heading up. And he had a date at least four levels below. If he didn't move now, he would be seen. He took the steps four and five at a time, landing hard enough to snap unsupported ankles, but his boots took the punishment, and he arrived the egress two levels lower just as the door swung open. He slid in behind it and held the handle. The soldiers were all heading up. There was always a tag behind. So Alec held the door for him. The sound of marching boots hid a sickening snap.

Lieutenant Kuznetsov was still sort of alive when Alec drug him into the emptied infirmary. His kicking legs actually helped them along. It was an awful risk, but Alec took it. There was no one left at reception, and the sick rooms were cleared out. Good. He finished Kuznetsov (he found his ID card and introduced himself) with a jerk and took the young man's pants off before they were soiled.

He was buttoning the jacket when the intercom dinged outside. Alec instantly recognized the voice. "Final warning," Ourumov threatened gravely. "Terrorists have infiltrated Arkangel. The base is under attack. A chemical leak is imminent. Evacuate. Repeat. Evacuate." His voice was replaced with a blaring alarm.

Panic should have touched him, but Alec's sharp features merely pursed together around an aquiline nose. "How have you loused this up, Double-O Seven?" He admonished Bond. He drew the curtains on Kuznetsov, transferred essential items into his pocket, and stepped back out into the hall. Then he smiled an ugly, crooked smile.

In the hall, there were cabinets made of particle board, inside were paper gowns and other various supplies you'd find in any doctor's office in the world. Alec's quarry was uniquely Arkangel. He unfolded the neatly compacted hazard suit and regarded the baggy, deflated form, and then he took his small survival knife and began to carve around the mask. "Never fear, Double-O Six is here. Will you tell them how I saved your life at the cost of my own? Will you mourn me, James?"

When he was done, he sank further down into Arkangel and met his fate.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

_Author's Note: In this chapter, I have shamelessly cribbed a line from Dances with Wolves._

* * *

_Chapter Thirteen_

_Unexpected Development_

It was eerily quiet when Alec stepped into Processing-A, the laboratory where the Arkangel brewed its particular kind of soup. Three vats stood at least that tall almost side by side and nearly ran the entire length of the floor. Suspended high above them was a series of metal scaffolding and walkways that walked to and frow to each pot of stew, and retreated to a small box control station looming over the proceedings. The windows were made of glass so thick that from down below, Alec could quickly tell it was at least the girth of the A volume of the encyclopedia. The scale was monolithic for an installation buried so deep.

Above him, he could hear the man-made lake draining through man-sized pipes in the ceiling, which by observing the almost labyrinthian maze work, he could follow the pathway (that no doubt required a diversion produced via the control room) to three spigots at the corresponding vats, no doubt in place to flood the chemicals in response to a disaster.

There was a faint rumble, dulled by the layers upon layers of concrete. The last of the crew were rolling out through the run hidden in the empty sea bed. Alec was alone. And for the first time—far too late to change the outcome—afraid. And yet, he knew not to run. That was the worst part, he was doomed, he had his first inklings, and running would only hasten it. The best course of action was to last the course and try and avert the outcome at the most vulnerable second.

He smelled Ourumov before he found him. He was passing, crisscrossing through the vats, walking the long rotund parameter when his nose tried to crawl back in between his cheeks. It was a sour kind of alcohol soaked must.

Ourumov was sitting in a metal folding chair that he had kicked up onto two legs, and he was leaning it against the vat wall of what might be designated as containment number two. His eyes were closed, and his cap was pulled down over them, a crystal decanter absently dangled from one hand. He looked better suited for a quilted hammock on a Jamaican coast. The Colonel hummed a tune about a man who bore the horse ride home in a restless winter by pleading with the frigid snow.

The gold star pinned to the red lining on his cap made a good target. The Browning raised, then stopped midway. At this range, the bullet would pass through him and strike the stainless tub. Puncturing it was not the issue, for Ourumov could be drenched in the liquid and only receive a mild rash, not that his nearly headless body would react at that point. The heat of the shell, however, would cause problems, or so the briefing claimed. M's right hands didn't make mistakes. Alec's, on the other hand...

"Colonel Ourumov." There was a hostile swelling of gravel in Double-O Six's voice.

Arkady's eyes lit up. His cap fell off, but he kept his balance. And smiled a vacant, morbid grin.

The gun barrel finished its crane towards home. "What have you done?" Alec growled uneasily, not sure he could hold the gaze of the other man.

Ourumov raised his glimmering bottle and toasted their dead alliance. "To your journey!" Then he gestured upward with the bottle. "To my journey!" And there, arranged festively like Christmas lights on the metalworks walkways, the explosive charges Bond was to have smuggled in for the show. The charges were primed, but they were not counting down. They flashed word SET over and over in their digital readers.

"Where's Bond? Is he dead?" Clearly, Alec had chosen wrong. A mad man was not ever anywhere near Alec's first inclination when he met Ourumov in Paris three years ago. Alec was working security detail for visiting leaders in the field of biological research at a summit held in the Palace of Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors had been chosen as a symbolic gesture, as the summit was less about the research and more about trying to threaten the visiting Russian scientists out of continuing their ailing aims through the use of chemical hardware, lest they face Germany's fate.

Ourumov had a reputation. Intelligence had sized him up for the meeting. He was a man who valued himself and the comfort thereof more than anything else. His vices followed suit. He drank and ate expensively, lavishly, and yet money was never a problem. It was hypothesized that there might be a vulnerability to exploit, but no embezzlement had very been verified. He covered his tracks well on that score, though the business that went on under his silk sheets went less protected.

He was also known at the time for being unhappy with his position. Newly promoted, he was bored guarding a textile manufacturing plant (unconfirmed at the time to be a chemical weapons development project) in Magnitogorsk. He was a man of ambition. Advancement was his game, and he wasn't a fellow who was very quiet about it. There were no reprimands on file, so far as Intel could gather, but the reputation stood.

Alec Trevelyan, then nursing a torn rotator cuff off a little double-o detente in Minsk, made contact, and since then, their alliance had borne fruit on both sides of the curtain. Fruit which was to have begun to sweeten on this day. But, some streak of madness had raised to the surface. Had he been broken by the coming of the moment where he would have to actively pursue his dreams under a false face? Hadn't he had practice in that arena? Being two-faced should have come naturally.

Alec could still go under, he desperately argued with himself, without valuable resources in the Soviet Army. And without Double-O Seven's admissible testimony to confirm his death. MI6 would always question, always have an open file for their missing agent. There would be a man, of course, reading stolen reports from the site when the Soviets finally worked their way through the wreckage. The Bodies of Bond and Ourumov would be found in some order or another, but not Trevelyan, and they would always be looking for him. They'd never be sure, the paranoia wouldn't let them be. He'd never relax. And if he made another Soviet contact, he would risk detection.

The long suppressor dug under the chin of the former Colonel Ourumov. "You old, simpering fool! Where's Bond's body? What have you done with him?!"

Arkady grew serious. He let his free hand slide into his jacket, and Alec nearly killed him right then. Out came a small gunmetal rectangle the size of a cigarette lighter. Alec was sure that's what it was until it was held up in his face, and then he recognized the work of Q Branch. It had a small piece of plastic attached to it that looped into a hooked arch. "He wanted you to have this."

Alec's lip curled and formed a vacillating expression stuck at cross-purposes, not quite a smile or sneer. He snatched the piece and looped it into his ear. After a long breath that concealed enough hot air to light the entire base afire, Trevelyan cooed. "This is a bit theatrical for you, James."

There was static in his ear, and then a voice, wistful, melancholic, and yet warm, espousing and friendly—much too friendly to mean well. "How far back can you remember, old friend?"

Next: Answers at last in Chapter Fourteen: Paperclip.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

_Chapter Fourteen_

_Paperclip_

"We don't have much much time, James. The Russians will very likely order a strike on this place. The nearest airbase is-"

"How far back, Alec?"

Trevelyan remained unflinching. "Well, I grew up in a drafty old mansion in the highlands of Scottland." He spoke affectedly. "Of course, I don't like to talk about that time. Too many bad memories."

There was an audible frustration on the other side of coms. "Your father killed your mother and himself when you were six. Is that why?"

"Oh no," Trevelyan assured, as he slowly zigzagged through the laboratory floor, eyeing any point from which a sniper might be hiding. The sheer scale of the room gave away most hiding places. The only place to camp would be on the upper scaffolding suspended over the vats, or the control room. Trevelyan looked for the stairs while he talked, his gun peering first around every nook. "I'm not sure where you're getting your information, James. My parents were killed in a climbing accident in the French Alps when I was eleven. What are you planning, Double-O Seven?"

"You're about to die heroically for England, Alec. The stairs are on your next right. Go to them. Leave the gun on the steps."

Trevelyan holstered the Browning inside the late Russian lieutenant's jacket when he spotted the stairs. The landing at the top was hidden from view, and it would make a pleasant surprise at the top, but he was sure now James wasn't finished talking. Bond wanted answers, and there were one or two things Trevelyan needed clearing up. "I grew up with a chip on the shoulder. I thought the world owed me something. I thought I was better than everyone. Better than the women I abused, better than the friends I considered no more than sycophants." His boot found the first rung.

"I told you to leave the gun," the com snapped.

"Then I joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves, and I started believing in something much bigger than myself. I was recruited into the Secret Service. It helped for a while." Trevelyan ignored him, advancing like a father upward to check on his sleeping girls. "It does help for a while, doesn't it, James?"

"Final warning." Trevelyan reached the top. He peered through the suspensions for any sign. Nothing. He pulled out his weapon and let it tumble on the steel grating. Below him, Ourumov began to whistle tunelessly.

"Why, Alec?"

Unarmed, Trevelyan's stride was much more casual. He put his hands in his pockets and walked the plank. He shrugged. "I guess I just grew tired of all the killing. All the vodka martinis in the world could never silence the screams."

"Let me tell you about my life, old friend." The timber on the line was deathly.

Trevelyan stepped into the control box. No one was there. It was a bare little installation, no more than three strides to get across it. There was one window that faced the factory floor. Exposed wires and industrial cords coiled into a control panel that sat awkwardly on top of the tangled web.

"I've worn a mask all of my life." Bond's voice seemed to echo in the room. "I put it on the first time one morning when I was six when I found my parents spawled in each other's arms on the floor of the kitchen in our little boarding house. They looked like they were sleeping on top of a red halo. I don't think I've ever told you this."

"You are going to regret this, James." The cool exterior melted from Trevelyan's side of the conversation. Above the control panel was a big mushroom-shaped button marked in Russian: DUMP. He paid no nevermind, but its position on the wall next to the window and the ostentatious red of it called his attention. Through the window, his vision captured a faint glimmer of recognition. Locked in place along a long stretch of railing that divided observation decks over the vats there was a rack of empty hazard suits. They were full bodied head to toe, white, and billowy like pillows. They were clipped just so that they gave off a distinctly occupied ghostliness. The mask hid only a portion of the face. The calm tried to regain its footing, but it fizzled at the touch.

Bond continued. "I've thought a lot about it through the years, looking over the pictures taken of their bodies." Trevelyan had never seen those pictures and felt the invasion sharply. And Bond went on. "I think father positioned my mother carefully over him before he delivered the coup de grace to himself. He must have known I'd find them, or that they'd make a beautiful picture for the coroner. He made sure none of my mother's defensive wounds were visible."

"I'm going to kill you, James." Trevelyan stepped out the other side of the control box and moved, seemingly purposelessly, to the suits dangling where the air was still.

"From then on, I decided that I would be true only to myself. That I would go to any length to conceal myself. I'd pretend that I didn't know about my father's shame. And when the time was right-"

Trevelyan lunged suddenly at one of the suits and jerked its collar. His face was close enough to fog the visor, but inside the tinted glass, he could see eyes. He ripped the hood off and stared to the inert, gaping expression of Adrik Vasilevsky.

The Walther's silencer pressed hard against the bump in Trevelyan's occipital bone. "I'd show my real face."

Trevelyan smiled and released his hold. "That was quite a lovely rendition of my life," he congratulated. "You give me much more credit than I give you."

"So, is the son still fighting for Russian All-Military Union?" Bond's voice was straining not to elevate. "Or did father dearest make you goose step until it took?"

"I fight for myself, James." His demeanor had chilled to subzero levels. "So, who gave me up?"

Bond did not respond directly. "Your friend, Ourumov, has something to do with it."

Trevelyan understood or thought he did. "Our mutual history. The Lienz Cossacks."

Bond said nothing.

"If it's not too much trouble asking, James, but why is Arkady still alive?" He was still buzzing below, seemingly unaware.

There was a pause, and then. "I have orders to take him alive."

"_Why_?" It was a perplexed scoff. Trevelyan tried to twist his head, and the silencer dug at the bone. Then he understood. "A defection!"

Double-O Six could sense other agent's shrug behind him. He could also sense him tensing. "Something like that. He's...been asked for. I have my orders."

"Something troubling you, James? Tell me."

"Nevermind. Let's take a walk."

"Because of my father!" Ourumov called suddenly alert and alive. "I'm going to see my father!"

"_What_?"


	15. Chapter Fifteen

_Chapter Fifteen_

_Paperclip Part II_

Three days ago (in 1986), Bond was sitting with the Colonel.

"Let's talk about our mutual friend, who is visiting in a few days. You're quite close, you and Alec Trevelyan. You both have fathers who fought in the name of the Reich."

"My father drank too much, talked too much. It was his liver that killed him."

"Your father's liver is fine. It was successfully transplanted in 1977."

Sobriety stuck Ourumov like a lightning bolt, there was a relief, bewilderment, and then a kind of despair washed over him, and he took a gulp of the whiskey that deserved to be sipped. His glass drained, and he set it aside, then he sat up straight and cleared his throat, as though about to speak. His mouth opened and flexed, on the verge of an offering. When he settled back into his chair Bond explained.

"We probably would have been better off if we'd never followed the trail. We still aren't quite sure of how he accomplished every stop, but we know where he ended up." Bond grew visibly uncomfortable, and Ourumov, inebriated or not, read it, and a smile scarred the face passed down to him by Andrey, who had gone by Grigor, and who now went by another name.

"He goes by Gregory Stepanov now. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America in 1969. We have a very good idea of how he pulled that off, considering he knew we were looking for him once we discovered you were aiding Trevelyan. He contacted us via friends from Washington, and we were handed new marching orders. It seems the honorable ex-Senator from Florida has cut a deal for you."

"Senator?" Ourumov did not hide his fascination well, though he tried, his eyes were great saucers fit for launching.

"I'm told he barely registers an accent, if at all. You've a new home waiting for you in North Beach, Miami."

Ourumov had settled again, and he scoffed at it all like he was being handed a plate of dog feces. "I suppose I will have to make due having to live with him."

"That is the arrangement," Bond cajoled with faux, mawkish concern. "After you spend, oh, I'd say about eight years in an MI5 run prison. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get time for good behavior."

"A prison term?" This got a reaction worthy of the revelations that had been bestowed.

"Does it really concern you that much? For what you've done with Trevelyan, they do not usually send me to broker deals."

Ourumov raised an eyebrow, and his smile threatened to enlarge. Bond's restrained, grim-visaged face dissuaded him.

"The intelligence he passed you cost the life of an agent in the field." Bond did not specify that it was Double-O Two, who had been killed in action as a result of a party the Soviets threw trying to lay hands on Stinger Missiles in Afganistan. The attempt failed, for the most part. Some of the missiles went missing, and the Soviets didn't end up with them. It was now believed that they had been sold to private buyers. Despite being burned beyond recognition, hastily covered in a communal grave with the Afghans, Double-O Two had been recovered, as had the bullet had laid him down. Double-O Seven had exhumed him personally.

The shot came from Trevelyan's signature gun, the Browning BDA, as loyal as was the PPK to Bond. Things had unraveled from there, and what had once been a pleasant, quiet matter of putting down a rogue and his accomplices, had unexpectedly evolved into this situation. The accessory, a Colonel who had let his ambition ensnare himself in Trevelyan's dream, happened to have an ex-nazi soviet turncoat father, who had somehow survived poisoning and had finagled himself into some kind of intelligence career for the Americans and that career had been so illustrious that he'd been handed power.

Ourumov was to be taken 'home.' He would not face more than three years inside (eight years had been an idle threat) and then he would retire on an American beach in extreme comfort. But, he had to 'die' first, as a good Soviet. And Alec Trevelyan would die a good soldier, taking the full brunt of both men's actions. To say that James Bond was displeased with this arrangement was the understatement of a few lifetimes.

"Well," Ourumov sighed with the newfound confidence that he controlled his situation. "What do we do?"

Bond assured him who held the cards. "Trevelyan is coming in three days. I am to meet him here to destroy this roadside cyanide stand. You're going to make yourself look like a hero to your men when you uncover the infiltration and save their lives, but too late to protect your own." That had been _demanded_. Ourumov had to smell of roses in death. "The factory goes up, Trevelyan goes down, and I extract you."

"Alright-"

"And if you get in my way at any time, Colonel, I will shoot you dead on the spot."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

_Chapter Sixteen_

_The Death of Alec Trevelyan_

"What's the matter, James? Can't shoot me if you have to look me in the eye?"

They were standing at an observation deck suspended over an open vat of chemicals. The liquid inside was thick and solid looking and contrary to the Warner Brother's cartoons, the substance was not green and glowing. It looked more like an off-white, almost cream colored paint finish. The exact name of the compound escaped Trevelyan. He and Bond were briefed, but he could only remember right now that it was mostly inert in regular temperature. You had to agitate it, get it hotter to see what it could really do. Onboard a missile it was ideal for creating a catastrophe once it hit the air.

"Ourumov," Bond's voice was a little further away, but Trevelyan could sense him tense. "Ourumov, see to the controls." He was yelling now, whatever patience Bond had for this operation had worn out. Trevelyan noticed, had noticed this growing little quirk in Double-O Seven in the years that they had associated with each other.

Double-Os were loners by nature and trade. You send them in because you don't expect them to come back and the fewer loose ends, the better. You can cut the tie so much easier. Duos were not regular. He and Trevelyan had been assigned to work together often in the past few years, and the reasoning progressively became clear.

Once the proud, blunt instrument of Her Majesty's Government, Bond had begun to vacillate in his work. He had not directly contravened orders, not yet, but Trevelyan had seen his fair share of 'judgment calls,' moves made in the name of intuition. For a while, it all seemed to be just a part of what made Bond good, but the strength, the discernment, the individuality only went so far. It was clear that somewhere along the line, a rebellious streak had reared in his friend and it was being noticed.

Arguments with M, suddenly being much more concerned with the why and not the how, letting lower level operatives avoid a bullet, Trevelyan slowly realized his role as babysitter. No one had said as much, but he knew it.

He had almost invited Bond to join him. Almost. Bond's behavior had become too obvious. They were like a cry for help, overtures. He was begging someone to fire him. He wasn't a traitor.

Ourumov awkwardly scaled the same stairs that Trevelyan had traversed, and as he passed the gun, he eyeballed the weapon quizzically, but the sober recesses of his mind didn't hup two, two. He staggard slowly, swaying down the walkway and into the control box. The metal beneath their feet fluttered alive. Beneath them, the solid mass undulated in deliberate revolutions. The bubbles grew bigger and bigger to compensate for the gas rising up in them. When the first popped, it splattered on Trevelyan's boots.

"Turn around," Bond mumbled. "Slowly."

Trevelyan's hands were clasped firmly on the back of his head. He craned around, smiling an ugly smile that tarnished a handsome visage. "If you're going to shoot, for mercy's sake just do it. Let's not say goodbye like friends we were."

Bond was aiming for his head. If Trevelyan finched, he was sure it was over. He would never admit it, but the look in Bond's eyes frightened him. They were fixed, bright, and absolutely present. And then Bond said, "If I ever see you again, Alec, I'll finish you." Ourumov was still in the control hut, and all he could see was the back of Bond's head. The hissing current overlapped and covered Double-O Seven's words.

Trevelyan had only just registered what Bond had said when pain erupted inside of him. Bond had lowered the gun slightly and fired into his chest. He saw the ceiling, then the bubbling sap, and then nothing.

Bond stood there just a few seconds and then said: "Ourumov, dump it!"

The ex-Colonel lifted his hand to big red mushroom. Bond turned away from the vat and caught a faint, but not faint enough look at Trevelyan's discarded weapon. It wasn't his Browning. Bond could see the spool, the scope, and the overly big barrel. It was the specially made Piton Double-O Six had used to bungee down into the camouflaged rocks.

Bond whipped around in time to see Trevelyan rise out of the muck. He was wearing part of a hazard suit mask in his mouth. The extremities of his face had already begun to dissolve. His hair clung loosely to his skull. He was blood red. His Browning BDA was still seaworthy and rose to fire. A shot rang out.

Ourumov slammed his hand down onto the button. Ice cold water plunged into the vat from the pipe above. After a few moments, a hatch opened in the bottom of the barrel and flushed the extinguished contents back into the lake. What was once Alec Trevelyan's only hope for clemency became his funeral barge.

Or so Bond had thought until Xenia Onatopp walked a stiletto over his grave.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

_Chapter Seventeen_

_Goodbye Uncle_

James Bond leaned back out of his story and half expected to see the ghosts of Kurhaus inclining closer to hear him better. Alec Trevelyan might or might not be one of them. If he were to emerge from the shadows, he would chastise, not for the loss of his life, but for Bond's inability to tell the whole truth, even to Q. There was a single omission. Before sinking into the depths, Alec had screamed or was it a laugh; a send up to their friendship. "For England, James?" And then he was gone. But, had he died?

"You didn't see the second bullet strike him?" Q gave no suggestion of surprise. He was still the same man as before, and Bond wondered if it was because Q had seen the end of Double-O Seven's tenure before he had. How different he had been from the man of yesteryear, who shrugged it all off with a one-liner and flick of an eyebrow. How many men had done the same, and finally cracked? How many men had lasted as long as Bond in the field? Maybe that was the point. They died before they'd had to endure erosion.

"No, I didn't. He did recoil."

"So it's possible that the wounds weren't fatal."

"Yes."

Q continued without hesitation, rapid-fire like a debriefing. Bond wanted to thank him for that. "You demolished Arkangel?"

"Yes,"

"And you secured Arkady Ourumov?"

"Yes, we used the spotter plane to reach the extraction zone."

"Did M hand you that special matter personally?"

"Yes, as I understand it, only a handful of people knew about the deal for Ourumov."

"Was it because of the nature of this 'defection' that you initially gave quarter to Double-O Six?"

Bond halted. It was part of the reason, another reason was their friendship. And yet one more was that Bond suspected that had he and Alec's positions been reversed, had Bond truly lived the life that had antagonized his friend, he didn't know that he would have done differently.

"I don't know," was all he would say.

"Alright, Double-O Seven," Q said, sternly. "Firstly, you are not Alec Trevelyan. Perish any thought of that. Secondly, you were a good agent, but you made a mistake. You might have made a mess, and you have a chance to clean it up. Clean It Up. Thirdly, I will scour any suspicious reports that have made recently, anything that might indicate something big brewing. God knows, when you have enemies, they don't employ subtlety."

"They do like to make a good show of it," Bond brightened. "Listen, I think I only have a little time before I find out one way or the other. If there's something more, I'll need it very soon."

"How soon?"

"Within the hour."

Instead of a rebuke, whose notes were rote and well remembered, Q hesitated only just and then said: "If it's there, you'll have it."

"Thank you."

A curt honk, singular and just loud and quick enough to grab his attention told him it was time to move.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

_Chapter Eighteen_

_Leaving Kurhaus_

The exhaust fumes were not unlike the cigar smoke that lingered in the casino. They hung onto the night and cast the evening in an eerie repose. The headlights led the apparition down the drive. It was soundless on the walk, and from the Kurhaus, the only evidence of its reality was the horn, which had been replaced, sounding painfully modern, much, Bond was sure, to the shame of the old girl. He recognized her instantly. The Phantom II, the mistress of an aristocracy supposedly faithful to local chi·chi pretentions. From a distance, she appeared quite black, but like blood in the moonlight, as Bond drew closer, he saw her deeply set crimson finish, like dark chocolate spotted on wet, red lipstick.

Bond's shoe brushed against a sleeping form, shuttled in the overgrown brush. There came a long, languid moan, and the spell was broken. Bond marched passed onto the cobblestone and went upon the driver's side. There was an almost imperceptible pause, brief, courteous regard for the Silver Lady. She planted her feet, poised and ready to leap, to lead the way. Her billowing garments rippled around her arms and cautioned for liftoff.

Bond rapped on the window with his left hand. He was standing in profile, the gun (recovered from security on the way out) hiding in his right palm was not. His right hand was in his jacket pocket, and it could ruin the suit and the velvet upholstery inside the car in one decisive flinch. He looked reasonably casual, or as casual as a man in a tux can get standing on the ruins of a dilapidated estate gone to the ghetto.

The windows were tinted and dark. When the seal in the glass cracked, more smoke simmered like an open oven door.

"Step out." Bond's smile did not reach his eyes or his voice.

"You wanna drive, chemi siq' varulo?" Bond could sense those red lips turn out, and tiny pinpoints beam. She waited, then obliged.

Shedding her elegance did nothing to dull the severity of Xenia's beauty. In fact, her comfort inside this new militaristic shell endeared her to him even more. The leather coat resembled a standard issue tunic for an officer. It was most definitely hers, but any discernable insignias or rank indicators had been carefully removed. Three gold buttons smartly aligned across her right clavicle, and several more broke off and marched down to her hips. Her boots slapped unforgivingly on the stone as she turned her back to Bond and outstretched her hands at her side in a kind of resigned shrug. Her glove palms upturned, saying go ahead.

She was very good at faking apathy and gave no indication of titillation when he touched her, padding all the usual hiding places for concealed weapons. He started with her feet and worked up. When he reached her beltline, he stopped, his hands rested there, firmly, and she suddenly felt very warm. His hands were the only part of him that made contact, but she could intuit him there, very close, nearly an embrace, like a lover creeping behind to envelop her.

Bond let his mouth and nose come very close to her ear. She had pulled her umber locks into a very tight, soldiery bun. He saw the individual strands struggle to keep hold of her hairline. Her features followed suit, stretched grievously, and hard. Her jawline appeared longer now, taught, animalistic. The cleft in his chin and the long line of her jawbone nearly met, throwing off that small pinch of heat as skin prepares to meet foreign flesh. So far, her mandibula is what he loved about her the most. What might she do if he kissed it?

Xenia seemed to understand this and craned her neck upward to invite him, ready to let the unresponsive illusion drop. As she did so, his fingers plucked open a gold ruble and produced a surprise from inside. "I'm not going to have to worry about this, am I?" He held it up for her to see. The hilt of the dagger was longer than the edge. It looked like a pilot's survivor knife. It was a bit heavy, and he took note of that, as well as the three small holes that marked onward across the surface of the steel blade.

"One never knows what kind of strange men a woman may encounter." Her voice was breathy and slightly annoyed at the finish, knowing she had betrayed herself. Finishing Bond would bring her great joy. The ecstasy of the kill would fill her with light.

Bond had almost asked Q to run a make on Xenia Onatopp, if indeed that was her real name. But isn't a lady entitled to a little mystery? Bond could see Q rolling his eyes and retorting: _not if you're running blind into an enemy nest._

To hell with it. He wanted to see what Xenia would give up herself, and how much. The knife was the first or what might be many tells, and if she gave more willingly, maybe then, this night didn't have to end with her death when this all went assuringly bad.

He replaced the knife and stepped away. The Phantom's back door opened and he slunk inside.

"Drive," he ordered.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

_Chapter Nineteen_

_In Transit_

The Phantom's backseat was velvet-lined and cast brightly red. It altogether looked like a boudoir rather than a backseat. There was a cabinet fastened to the back of the front seat that was repurposed into a cooler. A table spread had been slid out from under it. There was Bollinger La Grande Année, and malossol cured caviar on a nacre plated dish. Freshly made blini encircled the bowl on the tray. Bond picked up a spoon (hand-carved animal horn) and went at preparing. There was a small bowl of creme fraiche, which he ignored.

Xenia took her place as driver, and off they went into the early morning gloom. The beast at the helm was an unstable mistress, keeping her seams from splitting through only the sternest concentration. A lesser horse would buck under the reins, but the Phantom did not protest. She hummed so quietly it was almost imperceptible, and Bond imagined that her scream was left only for the four-legged, who might not be inclined hoop and howl a response. The soundless cry would twist through the spine, Bond surmised, but it would be fair warning.

He knew the old girl, even in her day, could only top about fifty miles per hour, but she seemed to be going much faster. Trees whipped passed, barely images. Even so, he could see the eerily uniform lines of post-war-ravaged Europe, lurking still in the foreground like a double exposure. The woods, neat and slim, stood at attention, seemed to dance in the beams.

The privacy glass, like the spectral car, was soundless. Xenia only knew Bond made a move because her eyes hardly left him alone. "Be careful," he warned, and then spoke with a sliver of a smile. "Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere." The gray-green flash of his eyes betrayed the presence of the machine, which was calculating, machinating, even foreseeing.

Bond leaned up to the open partition, and his hand slipped around Xenia's face. "Have some."

Bond need not see those red lips to know they had contracted into a tightly pursed smile. The blini proved much more appetizing than the martini. She ate hungrily, her teeth clipped his finger cleanly, without so much as a tug. She was mid swallow when Bond made his real move, and she nearly choked. He attacked, not with his hands, but with a flat delivery of curt, snubbed words.

"So," he paused to suck the blood mark forming on his forefinger. "Did Military Intelligence recruit you before or after you met Trevelyan?"

Xenia cleared her throat and maintained her composure, but her dark eye-shadow tunneled a deeply set glower into the rear-view mirror. Brown burned hotly, consuming the green in her irides like a slow, smoldering, but determined forest blaze. A smile, too high in the cheekbone to be real. momentarily squinted the flame into the end of a dying cigarette ash. Her playful retort rang closer to patronizer, the kind of a young restaurant attendant forcing good temperament out of bad under a thin mask of accommodation. "So direct," she said. "I was told you appreciated a little foreplay."

His comeback was immediate and still fresh out of the Arctic tundra. "If we share the same mother, foreplay enhances the obscenity of the act."

Xenia was content to let the matter fall into a period of silence, but Bond carried on with the bluntness of an automated drill. The words crackled in her ears.

"Who has Mother set you on to? Me or Alec?"

He saw in the small mirror the slightest anchoring of a single eyebrow and it stirred him.

"Perhaps I am a double agent."

"Is it both of us?" His tone strained.

Silence.

"If you wanted me dead, your men could have taken me at the Kurhaus."

"You didn't drink the martini." Said more as a question. "It was a sedative. I am to serve you to Alec in as complete a form as possible, and you walked willingly into the trap."

Bond shook his head. "What has M planned?"

"If-" the word was emphatic, "I am working for other parties, it is only to serve our mutual friend-our brother-to use your slang. And that isn't really your concern. Not anymore."

Bond sighed wearily and punctuated it with a disaffected rumble. Then suddenly, he beamed and locked eyes with her. The conveyance slowed as did time, it seemed, and once again, they walked together between the seconds. Her pupils narrowed to dark hungry lights. She knew what he was going to say before his lips separated, and her answer was yes.

"Well, if I am to be the main course," he sighed again. "I should be entitled to a final meal. Although, an army girl like you is liable to be just as salty as this caviar." The joke was terrible, and a relic of a bygone era that hadn't suited Bond in a very long time, and he regretted saying it until, during the act of what we'll call love, Xenia whispered closely to his ear how badly she had wanted to strike him for it.


End file.
